alcohol safe for tanks?
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MaxTremors
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Ethanol or isopropyl?
edit: either way in the room with the tank, I would pour the alcohol on a rag instead of spraying it directly onto surfaces. Ethanol is okay in small doses (people dose vodka), but I suspect your not cleaning your house with gin.
edit: either way in the room with the tank, I would pour the alcohol on a rag instead of spraying it directly onto surfaces. Ethanol is okay in small doses (people dose vodka), but I suspect your not cleaning your house with gin.
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Whatever you do with the alcohol - others have dosed far more alcohol in their tanks.
make sure the aeration is good. A mini-bacterial bloom is possible/likely.
make sure the aeration is good. A mini-bacterial bloom is possible/likely.
ColoredRock
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or themselves
I use a 50% vinegar / distilled water in a spray bottle to clean around the tank.
Dkeller_nc
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Since you're in the Phillipines, and I'm guessing your local conditions are tropical/semi-tropical, I'm going to interpret that you've good reason to want to disinfect your house that might not be apparent to those of us living in the US.
From the standpoint of truly disinfecting surfaces, there are other, more effective materials to use for disinfecting surfaces, such as surfactants that contain quaternary amine groups (cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide is a common example), or benzalkonium bromide/chloride (Lysol is an example of a disinfecting compound that contains the latter). Common household bleach is even more effective than those compounds, though it's obviously not appropriate for absorbant surfaces or fabrics that would be damaged by the bleaching effect.
I mention all of these because isopropyl alcohol, quaternary amine surfactants, bleach and especially cleaning products that contain benzalkonium bromide/chloride are all harmful to aquatic life. In a reef tank, the typical route of entry into the water column is through an aerosal of these products drawn in to the skimmer intake.
This is likely why Maxtremors suggested that you put the cleaning compound on a cloth rather than spraying it onto surfaces - this is good advice, even if you're going to use ethanol for disinfection. There have been at least two instances that I can recall on the forum of folks absolutely nuking their tank from the ethanol in the air after their home was sprayed by shellac (that uses ethanol as a solvent) by a fire-damage restoration company. The degree to which you should be cautious about ethanol, isopropanol or other cleaning products depends greatly on how much you're going to spray, how ventilated your house is to the outdoors, and how close you are spraying to the tank.
For these reasons, if you truly want to be cautious, I'd suggest turning the skimmer off, and covering the open water surface with plastic (and possibly the sump if you use one) for the duration of your cleaning activities and for 20-30 minutes afterward, presuming that you open windows/doors to allow any lingering ethanol/isopropanol in the house air to dissipate.
From the standpoint of truly disinfecting surfaces, there are other, more effective materials to use for disinfecting surfaces, such as surfactants that contain quaternary amine groups (cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide is a common example), or benzalkonium bromide/chloride (Lysol is an example of a disinfecting compound that contains the latter). Common household bleach is even more effective than those compounds, though it's obviously not appropriate for absorbant surfaces or fabrics that would be damaged by the bleaching effect.
I mention all of these because isopropyl alcohol, quaternary amine surfactants, bleach and especially cleaning products that contain benzalkonium bromide/chloride are all harmful to aquatic life. In a reef tank, the typical route of entry into the water column is through an aerosal of these products drawn in to the skimmer intake.
This is likely why Maxtremors suggested that you put the cleaning compound on a cloth rather than spraying it onto surfaces - this is good advice, even if you're going to use ethanol for disinfection. There have been at least two instances that I can recall on the forum of folks absolutely nuking their tank from the ethanol in the air after their home was sprayed by shellac (that uses ethanol as a solvent) by a fire-damage restoration company. The degree to which you should be cautious about ethanol, isopropanol or other cleaning products depends greatly on how much you're going to spray, how ventilated your house is to the outdoors, and how close you are spraying to the tank.
For these reasons, if you truly want to be cautious, I'd suggest turning the skimmer off, and covering the open water surface with plastic (and possibly the sump if you use one) for the duration of your cleaning activities and for 20-30 minutes afterward, presuming that you open windows/doors to allow any lingering ethanol/isopropanol in the house air to dissipate.
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Randy Holmes-Farley
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My Tank Thread
Yes, small amounts of alcohol will not hurt a tank.
